Recent content by finedwarvenmods

RedMarth, I tried all 7 cities owned by sarleon currently, and none of them had it. The chance for the quest to show up seems to be about 1 in 10, if not less. After revisiting 5 of those cities I finally found it in Marleons, which only 4 days ago had offered me a kidnapping quest instead.

The quest is easy though, if you're friends with the lord on your side then taking the hit to relation should be rather minor, even -25 relation is nothing to me when I have duke alamar at 100. Convincing the lord on the other side will be impossible if he outnumbers you though. He will just try to kill you and there will be no dialogue option, so you'll have to win the fight to finish the quest. I finished, and after 5 days the war was over!

At this point, I kind of want to betray sarleon and help the empire recover their lost property. If I betray my lord and swear vassalage to marius, is there a way to keep my castles/city the same way AI lords can?

As sea raider said, fierds was and still is reliable overall, with rough and tough infantry and tolerable cavalry in the nobility.  The fact that they are one of only two factions to have real elites in their peasant troop tree is also a big deal, especially for the AI lords who ALWAYS get 30-40+ elites, every single damn time, within a couple of weeks of getting flattened, without having to spend the month you would have to spend to raise an elite troop. Huscarls and 'Zerkers are both POWERFUL siege units and fantastic at bogging down and chopping up cavalry.

The other top tier option is always going to be the baccus empire, since they are the other only source of Peasant Elites, as well as another faction with large amounts of powerful infantry, and crossbows to boot! Empire gladiators are essentially 'Zerkers, and Legionnares aren't quite elite but they're certainly a damn sight stronger than other level 35 peasant troops.

Think of this as nothing more than a Native Mod for those seeking a challenge. In native, the Nords and Rhodoks are always going to be top tier. It's the same in this: the Fierdsvain and Empire are just in-depth reskins of the Nords and Rhodoks with a completely different story, but from a gameplay perspective they serve the same function more or less, and remain on top of the food chain. If you prefer hack and slash action, massed infantry, and a little chaos, go with the Fierdsvain. If you prefer orderly advances of lines of crossbowmen and shields, with some surprisingly decent cavalry, go for Empire.

akagikagahiryusoryu said:

Gorvex said:

Cavalry takes increased damage from braced spears/pikes/halberds, which is likely to dehorse them, given they have a full momentum (see 2nd screenshot):

Spoiler

If you aim properly (the AI can), you can hit the rider as well. So yeah, they demolish charging cavalry

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Sweet, thanks!

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It works great with a LOT of micro, because you have to keep in mind only units in the front row will brace automatically, assuming they have no shield and a polearm. If you use empire pikemen, they won't do it. In addition, if you have set up a Spears troop type in your army to more accurately control the spear bracing, when set to form 1 row (using advanced formations) the spearmen won't brace and will instead stand there like fools. The mod also doesn't put the first units in your army in the FRONT with advanced formations either, so it's meaningless to just put your halberdiers at the top of the army hoping that will make them automatically form the front line, as for some reason they will instead be all the way on the right. I doubt forming ranks would help either since ranks is based on troop skill level, and there are just about no truly elite spearmen in the mod discounting CKO.

In short, the only way to make it truly effective is to have large numbers of spears, form them in 2 rows, and ensure that none of them have shields, otherwise the effectiveness of bracing is dramatically reduced. Otherwise spearmen are about as good as they are in vanilla in this mod, which is to say not good at all. Probably something to do with the way their AI tells them to use their particularly unwieldy weapons.

Gorvex said:

finedwarvenmods said:

What you SHOULD do just as a start is increase combat speed to fastest and combat/campaign ai to good. If you can't fight a Knighthood Order troop on Good Combat AI with Fastest Combat, then you need practice.

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Are you always using shields in battles? And do you play with manual blocking? I'm just asking, because I need to have combat speed set to "normal" in order to reliably come out victorious in 1v1 or 1v2 duels against elite units. "Fastest" is too fast for me with manual blocking, as little stutters can happen any time in big battles (I play on 500 battlesize), and that is plenty enough to f*ck up your reaction time.

I'm talking about fighting without a shield ofc. Using one changes everything though, and I can set the combat speed to "fastest" no problem as well. Every other difficulty option is set to max/highest for me. But I don't play on 'realistic' so that I can avoid corrupted saves by saving only inside scenes. The overall difficulty is 100% this way (quite a well-rounded number )

Spoiler: My difficulty settings

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In all honesty, if I get damaged from a little stutter, that's that, and it's never been a reason for me to mess with my difficulty settings. I do use a shield and I do play with manual blocking, so for the most of a battle I'll be safe, and once the shield is gone It's generally not the end of the world depending on where I am. On horseback it's pretty damn easy to counter enemy attacks if you have the space to maneuver around since you can time how often you're going to be under attack, on foot it depends on how many I'm up against. groups of 2-3, sure, but past that I'm done.

The "difficulty%" is a bit of a fake number since so many different difficulty features are weighted to it. Increasing battle size does not make the game any harder, perhaps negligibly so in terms of having to manage more units and be more patient, and I suppose with larger armies you will be taking more arrow fire... but other than that a boost of "17% difficulty" for increasing battle size makes no sense. The game won't be any harder, you won't notice any difference.

What you SHOULD do just as a start is increase combat speed to fastest and combat/campaign ai to good. If you can't fight a Knighthood Order troop on Good Combat AI with Fastest Combat, then you need practice. Wait to increase the damage you recieve and the damage your allies recieve until you've really gotten the hang of combat with a variety of weapons, tournaments will be your friend in mastering all manner of fights. And, again, ignore the difficulty% number, it won't tell you how much harder it will REALLY be.

At that point you're describing the way mount and blade itself designs maps, since this is something that happens in Native as well as countless other mods. Even Polished Landscapes doesn't fix that issue, the map design can always be a bit befuddled with nonsensical hills, slopes, and divots, and it's just something you need to work around or plan for. It's the main reason I don't run cavalry/cav archer only armies as often, regardless of how susceptible my opponents may be to that strategy, because you never know when you'll run into disadvantageous terrain.

I'm an outright fool, I now remember doing that on my last playthrough, I was wondering why I remembered my old custom sergeants being better.....

On a side note, is there any way to change the physical characteristics (face/hair color/style) of your knights or will they always be the default male and default female characters

Gorvex said:

finedwarvenmods said:

Why can't I upgrade custom knighthood order sergeants? Am I missing something? Doesn't that make custom knighthood order sergeants completely useless? I can't equip them with a mount or any notable equipment, just stuff that will keep them alive, and even then they will not stay alive with stats like that....

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Train your CKO with companions, buy your companions some Dusts of Twilight to boost their stats even further if you so desire, and upgrade the CKO knights only when companions can't teach anything more to your CKO units (both knights and sergeants). This way, you'll have the best units in the game.

Other than that, it would still be very nice if KO sergeants in general could be upgraded a little bit, by gaining half the stats of what knights get upon each upgrade. That being +1 STR & AGI, as well as +10 weapon profs. Nothing game- or balance-breaking, but a nice little upgrade aesthetically, so that you won't feel frustrated for buying a chosen KO 7 upgrades (totaling at 1,27 million denars), with the sergeants staying on the exact same level as before (on par with faction top-tiers for regular KO-s)...

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I'm a little confused, how do I train my sergeants with my companions? It seems like I'm missing something critical about how to upgrade my CKO or didn't read something like a fool.......

Why can't I upgrade custom knighthood order sergeants? Am I missing something? Doesn't that make custom knighthood order sergeants completely useless? I can't equip them with a mount or any notable equipment, just stuff that will keep them alive, and even then they will not stay alive with stats like that....

Brew said:

The player can dominate the marshal role as its easy to keep controversy low while at war.

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Why is that? I've been sitting in the Sarleon marshal role for at least 50 days, at war with the Baccus empire, and I'm wondering why my controversy stays so low so easily compared to these other lords who get fired from Marshal after only a week? Does helping other lords in battle and taking castles just help that much?

SE4 R@1DER said:

if you equip them with no shield you get obviously a more offensive type of knight. kind of an (armored) glasscannon. in sieges they might soak some arrows but are easier to knock out .

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A couple of ways to fix that siege problem, although they're all a workaround to a problem that will still persist to some extent (lack of shields=lack of survivability)

In sieges, if you have a special Cav. Archer unit type set up then you can treat them as archers and have them stay back and clean up the walls while your REAL cav and infantry charges. Two sets of arrows is a huge boon for siege offense as well, so they could kill well both on the field and at the wall. They will still be readily killable by all projectiles, but archers take less casualties when the infantry and cavalry are busy charging up the wall and taking the bulk of fire, AND they'll hit more targets since the enemy will turn to face the charging infantry and expose their heads and sides.

On the open field, if you get hit with a Jatu/Seer/Whatever charge that you for some reason didn't have enough time to prepare for, knights with no shield and a ton of arrows are gonna die en masse before they can slow down the charge enough. Imo it'd be best to have the sergeants be Lancers or Heavy Cavalry with a thick, durable shield, if possible I'd even go for durability over size so that it lasts as long as possible. With some micro, the sergeants could effectively counter such a quick charge and give your Cav. Archers time to outmaneuver and eradicate, before the sergeants get caught in the dreaded bog.

I'm definitely gonna mess around with Cav. Archers some more this playthrough and see if I can't find a way to use them without abusing them, I hate fielding a Cav. Archer only army and just mopping the floor every time.

illmaster said:

I think a Rusty Fur is a bug


https://imgur.com/a/zBCg2GR

Edit: How to post image?

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not 100% certain on this but that could be a native bug, rusty is simply one of many modifiers and I don't know if you can intentionally remove the rusty modifier from all fur and cloth clothing without removing modifiers in general from said clothing

Titanjones said:

Merc Troops seem amazing and high quality now, just wat more expensive than their faction counterparts. What does everyone thing about the new tiers of Infagtrt/archer/Calvary?

Also..fierds archers now have cross bows..are they still bad to use?

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fierds archers don't have crossbows guaranteed, the top tier fierds skirmisher still has an unreliable javelin and no guaranteed crossbow, thus no range, no ammo, no control, and an unreliable unit unless set to be infantry

If you "abused retreat" then you probably just lost all of your honor if you were only sitting at 40 honor. For SOME reason PoP causes you to lose honor AND renown when doing a tactical retreat on a siege. I'd also like to point out, since you mentioned "dont even get prompted for selecting new marshal" earlier, Warband has NEVER shown you an option to vote for the current marshal, or even any sort of notification other than "here's the new marshal!" It's done behind the scenes based on lord opinion, controversy, and RNG only.